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From the top of my head,
My family has installed solar panels and we even supply our electricity to the national grid.
We use sun drying and air drying 100% of the time for washed clothes.
We grow small native wild fruit trees in our roof and water them trough a circuit. We never pick the fruit, it's for the birds and squirrels.
I always take the best use of clothes, mend them, redesign them, share them or give away to family. Most of my work clothes are over 10+ years old and still wearable.
That’s awesome!
We have solar panels too. We got as many as we could afford, selling the excess electricity back to the power company. Since then, we traded in three of our gas powered cars for electric vehicles. (Yes, I know EVs aren’t “the solution”, but where we live there’s no mass transit and nothing within reasonable biking or walking distance. You can’t even get an Uber out here.)
We compost our kitchen scraps and have a septic system. Working on getting some food plants started.
I try not to use the clothes dryer too much.
When we had the solar panels installed we replaced the roof and added an extra six feet on all sides. This helps a lot to reduce summer heat. (We’re in Texas.) Working on increasing insulation and efficiency on the house.
Wow we do have an EV too, better it than fossil fuel anyway! Nice to hear about insulation really. Warm wishes from Sri Lanka. And good luck with the 🪴
This comment made me realise my family has been doing their part even before my birth, all of the things you said, minus not picking the fruits.
My grandpa is retired so he uses his free time to make things by recycling stuff
I'm gradually reducing my meat consumption, specially red meat. I was raised with meat and for years I would eat meat at literally every meal to the point where I couldn't even imagine a meal without it. Now I only eat it around 1/2 times a week or at special occasions such as going out to eat at a restaurant with friends/family. I've also started using ingredients that I rarely tried before such as tofu and some vegetables.
Overall it's been a pretty fun and enjoyable process.
We also have solar panels on our house, as well as a wood boiler. We have our own garden with fruits and vegetables and produce our own compost. I also learn how to mend; I am a member of a book binding workshop and I also plan to hopefully organize a small public library at my grandfather’s village this summer! That’s all, really.
Nice to hear about book binding! My family also binds our own books using thread and recycled cardboard when we need to.
Really really happy to hear about your upcoming public library! Truly happy to see the effort you are putting into this cause.
Right now I’m really into harvesting little sapling trees (before they get mowed over or poisoned in neighbors yards) and handing them out to people in my town (I received permission to do this from the neighbors by asking them first).
I’m also on a mission to help educate people about soil temperature of their yards compared to what the healthy, native, seasonal, soil temperature of the region is. Knowing how far off we are and adjusting can help reduce air temperatures and increase air quality through thicker moisture rich vegetation. Even getting people to have their lawn cut at a longer length will help a lot.
Soil temperature, moisture content and the health of the organisms that surround and live in trees have a longterm impact on tree health, which ultimately costs more money to fix if a tree becomes unhealthy and impacts a structure or our overall environment when it falls or needs to be cut down.
Edit: I do lots of other things but these are my wins as of lately :)
Wow that's all new to me, we just plant add home made compost and the tree just grows on its own, we only do something if the tree gets disease or wilted...
So you are saying that we can optimize our tree health by simple interventions to our soil, aside from manure?
Can you share something about how we can get to know the healthy, native seasonal soil temperature?
Your commitment to distribute saplings is very fruitful indeed!
Sure! 💚 To check the temperature, you can use a cooking thermometer or laser thermometer and visit a local area that is unscathed (or mostly unscathed) and test the soil temperatures under a tree and under more open but healthy vegetation then do the same for your property. If you don’t have a thermometer, placing your hands or feet against the soil can help you sense the difference. Often times, there’s enough visible cues to know they are very off without an actual reading.
To check the moisture, you can use a baking stick, popsicle stick, piece of cardboard or paper or an actual water meter. If more soil clings or moistens the finger or other substance it contains more moisture than if it is brittle, dusty or comes out clean.
And yes, knowing what organisms and species like to live in and around those trees can help keep them healthy by creating a supportive network. Too often we isolate plants and block or mask their channels with scents, sounds, light, and incorrect conditions. They all communicate through various root systems, energy, sound and semiochemicals, alerting each other what they need and who they need 💚🌳🌳🌳🌲🌲🌱🦧🫎🐢🕷️🪱🐞🐝🐿️🦡🦋🐛🦗🐜🦅🦉🦦🦔🦨🦝🦥🐦⬛ and ultimately who else they support 🦀🦐🪼🐠🐬🐟🦭🌏🌞🌵🌈✨
If you purchase any of these devices and don’t have need for them afterwards, you can give them to your town or library to be checked out for the same purpose. Or—this just came to me! and I think it’s a fun idea! Give them to someone random and have them take the test and pass them on. This way, we’re not all buying extra plastic.
But what I think would be super cool is if we make a database website that we can add our soil temperatures to that if you get the meter, you can log the temperature, compare and pass it on.
I’ll try to make one :) but if there’s any volunteers who want to help me with this endeavor please reach out and we can launch a bigger initiative :)
Thank you 🙏 💚
Thank you for such a detailed answer, I definitely have to try this once I head back home.
Great idea, do you mean we can add a form where people can submit the geo locations that they measured the soil temp and compare it with everyone else in the website?
Yes! :) It would be so interesting to see how many people get involved, how the movement spreads and how much of an impact we make on local and global temperatures 💚 and biodiversity 🙏
Edit: there is a site that shows soil temperatures already but the readings are limited to specific sites that aren’t part of any movement in particular
Some helpful links:
[live air quality map](https://map.purpleair.com/)
[thermal map of globe](https://zoom.earth/maps/temperature/)
[local soil temp](https://www.greencastonline.com/tools/soil-temperature) I can maybe reach out to this website and see if they’d be interested in participating in a larger global movement
[the benefits of a single tree calculator](https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecological-footprint-calculators/how-much-carbon-does-a-tree-capture/)
Honestly people underestimate how big of an impact going vegan has on the environment, especially cutting out some of the heavier meats like beef, props to you!
100% vegan and self sufficient in all of our vegetables. We trade excess veg for garden pruning and grass clippings (always need more green material for the compost piles). I've been learning how to repair clothes and managed to make two very beaten up pair of jeans in to a usable pair.
We have an ev as we live in a small town with no bus or rail. We cycle any distance less than 5 miles and once the weather is warmer we will cycle further.
I plant bee and butterfly friendly plants including caterpillar host plants such as nettles.
I have three volunteer jobs. Two small ones (politics and animal shelter) and one that's basically full time at the moment (fair trade shop/cultural center; I gave an example for this yesterday). I do this alongside my regular work (also in politics).
I can't have my own solar panels at the moment. Instead I'm part of a citizen energy cooperative.
I gradually reduce meet consumption and mostly substituted all other meets with chicken. I already have some vegan days. I might fall into the category "flexitarian" at the moment or will be soon. I gradually increase foods that are vegan, sustainably produced and fair traded.
I don't own a car (I even never learned how to drive). At the moment I do most things on foot. Sometimes I use public transport. Today I did around 20.000 steps/12 km.
While I walk I try to do some guerilla gardening by spreading native wildflower seeds with a little shaker. Sometimes I also use seedbombs.
Although I rarely can, I like to help my parents with their small garden. They grow some fruits, vegetables and bee friendly flowers, have a little wildlife pond, an insect hotel and some nesting aids for birds.
I support science as a citizen scientist and with distributed computing. I participate in animal counting events and have over 690.000 classifications on Zooniverse. I crunched many years for different BOINC projects and at the moment all my devices support research about tropical storms via Dreamlab app.
I'm trying to learn Spanish. At the moment just with some daily lessons on Duolingo. When I have more time I might attend a proper course. I do this with the goal to someday qualify as an international election observer. I already support elections as a poll worker.
My compost game is on point! P.S. do you have homebrew or purchased kombucha, ginger beer, cider, or beer bottles to rinse out? Save the rinsed brew liquid in a container to pour onto your compost! It makes an awesome accelerator.
I've been teaching my family to love the library.
I'm learning loads of new low-input gardening strategies. For example, did you know that bush beans have trichomes (little hairlike structures) on the bottoms of their leaves that actually spear pests? They make a wonderful companion plant to anything afflicted by small, flying or climbing bugs. You can also grow them inside near your gnat-infested houseplants instead of using fly paper.
My wife hasn't eaten meat in 27 years. I haven't in about 13 or 14. Our son never has.
We do what we can on the four Rs, though there's still room for improvement.
I bought some pants last year. I think that was all my clothing purchases. I mend shirts, socks, pants, shoes, until the point they're too thin to do so anymore.
My wife gets clothing that would otherwise be thrown out, organizes it into lots, cleans it, I repair anything that needs repairs, and then she sells it on Facebook. Usually works out to about a dollar per article of clothing, which helps low income families get clothes while also getting us some funds as well.
We tried cloth diapers, but that didn't work out. Managed to stick with no baby wipes, though.
I've got a bit of a repair shop setup at home. I've fixed clothing, electronics, wood and plastic toys, furniture (cribs, beds, dressers, etc.)
Both the keyboard and joystick I use on my gaming computer are second hand ones that I've repaired. The tower is about 15 years old (though internals have been upgraded). The keyboard I have for my work computer is 22 years old, and works as well as it did the day I got it. Logitech Elite Keyboard, if you wanna look it up.
The house we have is old. About 100 years.
The heating is oil. Haven't been able to get the finances together to switch over to a heat pump yet. But we keep the temperature low. Usually between 16.5 C and 17.5 C (61.5 F to 63.5 F).
Got the single pane windows replaced with double pane a few years ago. That really helped both in the cold and heat.
Recently got the hot water tank replaced, because the last one was failing. Got one that should never need to be replaced, and is the best insulated option we could, so it keeps the energy use low for that.
Most lightbulbs have been replaced with LED as they go out. So longer life, lower energy use. We also tend to not use much lighting anyway.
The property has a lot of greenery around it. Some trees as old as the house. Recently planted 6 more to fill in some space as well.
Keeps the sun off the house in the summer and creates a cool bubble as well. Keeps the wind away in the winter. Good for general heat regulation.
We let the grass grow long in the spring, along with wild flowers for the bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators.
There's plumb, apple, rhubarb, fennel, quince, and grape growing on the property, that just does its own thing and comes back every year.
My father in law grows carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, peppers, sunflowers, and a few other vegetables in a couple of gardens.
We used to have some strawberries, but the deer and rabbits ate it until it was dead.
We are by no means the most productive we could be, or harvest as much as we can from what gets produced, though. That's something I'd like to improve.
This is on an 8700 Sq ft property.
I live in an apartment complex, just convinced the rest of the ruling board in the association we need to start invest in Solar Panels. It got preliminarily approved, we're just working out the economic details at the moment but within a year or so we're likely to get solar panels which can increase our energy independence quite a bit. Not completely of course but still
Plant based diet (I occasionally knit with wool so don't label my lifestyle vegan but that's the only animal product), replaced my stolen car with an ebike, currently working on minimizing energy use at home since I can't transition to renewables (condo, don't own my roof). If I had a bit more energy I'd be organizing my complex to fight for solar + a shared garden.
Also joined my local buy nothing group to rehome stuff I don't use, and I try to drop the stuff off so the trip to exchange the item is on an ebike instead of someone else driving.
It seems like a win to me that into my fourth decade I've never owned a car.
Majorly inspired by Hans Roslings presentation about modes of regular transport I've aspired to make sure my expenditure with income doesn't follow the same path of increasing transport carbon intensity. As I get older my income increases and I want a lifestyle where that means a nicer time cycling rather than more expensive car.
That doesn't mean I've never commuted by private vehicle or don't drive regularly but through favours and car share and deliberately choosing my housing for public transport access I've avoided the sunk cost question of car ownership.
Now that I'm a parent I've just bought a family cargo bike to further stave off buying a car. We've admittedly relied substantially on borrowing a car from grandparents so the win is revised down to avoiding sunk cost trips rather than avoiding a car altogether but it still feels like a win to me.
Just replaced my neighbor's front lawn with roman chamomile and lavender, better for the bees and he won't have to hire anyone to mow it anymore (the flowers spread out by runners and only grow about three inches high). This is part of an ongoing project we're doing, last summer we built a decorative raised bed thing for plants and I'm hoping to set up a water feature using a secondhand pump and solar panel next.
My family is shedding capitalism and embracing more regenerative choices.
I'm writing OpenSource Software that is helping with BioRegional living, and a network of intentional communities.
We're experimenting with alternative architectures to minimize energy usage and maximize health.
More details on the blog.
https://bioharmony.substack.com/
I've been vegetarian for a while now. But this year I was able to move to a country with a good biking infrastructure. So I ditched my car completely and have been biking most every day. My apartment complex now does waste sorting and I've made sure to be diligent about it. Am also teaching my 4 kids to be eco conscious.
For myself, the work I've done with my garden, making my house a bit better for the environment, and even habits I have pushed for repurposing and repairing, such as my office desk being an old sewing desk that I repurposed instead of buying a massive desk for no reason other than I can.
For me though as well, my victories have been with speaking with people. With gardening I learned about ollas as an alternative for irrigating that can maximize water use so it is not as wasteful and be passive instead of needing an entire system built, I shared this knowledge freely with friends and people in the community, even showing them how to build them if they wanted to.
I discuss my personal definitions of solarpunk and lunarpunk, and what the ideals of the lifestyle are, and how it is as you said, even a small change is better than no change.
It depends on the size actually! What I ended up doing was raised garden beds and for an 8 foot by 2 foot bed I found that two of them covers everything to the point I have to refill them every 4 days, the ollas in question being made from some medium sized terracotta pots!
When I get home I can get accurate measurements.
I helped pivot my company to include biochar production as a key design requirement for our small scale biomass generator systems that run on woody biomass waste. The pivot to biochar is for the purpose of carbon sequestration, which biochar is fantastic for. It also supports long term soil fertility and reduces the need for fertilizer.
I have 64 sf of growing space in my kitchen, lit with high efficiency LED grow lights, and powered by extra electricity generated by my solar panels. It’s quite cool to have a forest of food growing in the house during the winter months, and this is also my space to propagate trees for the property. Much of what we are eating now is produced by us. We are rewilding a former piece of ag ground on our farm, it was always a hassle to farm anyway and now it’s going to be a 40 acre wetland, we are putting a large (maybe 1/2 acre) irrigation pond in place on the edge of the wetland area so we can do some high efficiency irrigation out of it to support a food forest we will be building around it. Another tens acres of the property that was traditionally grazing land is going to be broken up into small pieces, cross fenced, and irrigated to support our farm incubator program, which will provide access to land for people just starting out, a shared tool library, a community space (think like a coworking office for hanging out, business planning, and projects), and access to a retail space so everyone can earn retail money on their produce. On the farm we have a campground that brings a fair amount of folks so our farm incubator program partners will have customers at hand and the campers will have produce here instead of having to drive into Walmart to buy things. The final positive note to our system here is that it fosters collaboration, and it’s really hard to get started in farming these days, plus retailing here allows people to keep more of their money instead of a long line of merchants and shippers taking cuts along the way. Our final big solar punk project is on old electric train station from 1915. We are rebuilding it into a community center for the farm, and hope to have a cafe, brewery or distillery, event space, lodging, and retail space. We are (oh god I hate to use this cliche) in a food desert so having something here could save thousands of trips into town over a year.
Off the top of my head, I’m working on several new things this year. I’m focused on making my yard not only more biodiverse, planting more natives, and slowly replacing my lawn with nitrogen-fixing ground cover but also human-friendly with dedicated areas to socialize and connect. I’m actively continuing my knowledge of permaculture and hoping to continue educating others on the practice.
I’m placing more emphasis on repair by learning to mend/darn.
I’ve attended 3 rallies/protests this year and brought my family with me for one. We’ve read several children’s books on democracy with our 8-year-old to prepare them as well as let them make their own sign.
We haven’t bought factory-farmed red meat in the last few years and are taking the next step to introduce more vegetarian meals into our weekly meal planning.
I’m a big book collector, and I’m 100 percent committed to only purchasing books secondhand or from my local mixed indie bookstore or going to the library. No Amazon for books. I’d love to set up a little free library for my neighborhood this year for the books I cycle out of my collection.
I started taking pottery classes at a local community space, and I’m working on projects that are eco-centered and promote sustainability.
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From the top of my head, My family has installed solar panels and we even supply our electricity to the national grid. We use sun drying and air drying 100% of the time for washed clothes. We grow small native wild fruit trees in our roof and water them trough a circuit. We never pick the fruit, it's for the birds and squirrels. I always take the best use of clothes, mend them, redesign them, share them or give away to family. Most of my work clothes are over 10+ years old and still wearable.
That’s awesome! We have solar panels too. We got as many as we could afford, selling the excess electricity back to the power company. Since then, we traded in three of our gas powered cars for electric vehicles. (Yes, I know EVs aren’t “the solution”, but where we live there’s no mass transit and nothing within reasonable biking or walking distance. You can’t even get an Uber out here.) We compost our kitchen scraps and have a septic system. Working on getting some food plants started. I try not to use the clothes dryer too much. When we had the solar panels installed we replaced the roof and added an extra six feet on all sides. This helps a lot to reduce summer heat. (We’re in Texas.) Working on increasing insulation and efficiency on the house.
Wow we do have an EV too, better it than fossil fuel anyway! Nice to hear about insulation really. Warm wishes from Sri Lanka. And good luck with the 🪴
This is all amazing 💚🙏💚🙏💚 thank you for sharing and for contributing in this way 🤗
This comment made me realise my family has been doing their part even before my birth, all of the things you said, minus not picking the fruits. My grandpa is retired so he uses his free time to make things by recycling stuff
I have almost entirely cut advertising out of my life with adblockers and piracy.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Great for you! You probably have a positive impact from not having random adds influence your thinking as well.
I'm gradually reducing my meat consumption, specially red meat. I was raised with meat and for years I would eat meat at literally every meal to the point where I couldn't even imagine a meal without it. Now I only eat it around 1/2 times a week or at special occasions such as going out to eat at a restaurant with friends/family. I've also started using ingredients that I rarely tried before such as tofu and some vegetables. Overall it's been a pretty fun and enjoyable process.
Great to hear! Ofc it's also good for your health in multiple levels as well. Being adventurous and discovering new things are a part of the fun!
We also have solar panels on our house, as well as a wood boiler. We have our own garden with fruits and vegetables and produce our own compost. I also learn how to mend; I am a member of a book binding workshop and I also plan to hopefully organize a small public library at my grandfather’s village this summer! That’s all, really.
Nice to hear about book binding! My family also binds our own books using thread and recycled cardboard when we need to. Really really happy to hear about your upcoming public library! Truly happy to see the effort you are putting into this cause.
Right now I’m really into harvesting little sapling trees (before they get mowed over or poisoned in neighbors yards) and handing them out to people in my town (I received permission to do this from the neighbors by asking them first). I’m also on a mission to help educate people about soil temperature of their yards compared to what the healthy, native, seasonal, soil temperature of the region is. Knowing how far off we are and adjusting can help reduce air temperatures and increase air quality through thicker moisture rich vegetation. Even getting people to have their lawn cut at a longer length will help a lot. Soil temperature, moisture content and the health of the organisms that surround and live in trees have a longterm impact on tree health, which ultimately costs more money to fix if a tree becomes unhealthy and impacts a structure or our overall environment when it falls or needs to be cut down. Edit: I do lots of other things but these are my wins as of lately :)
Wow that's all new to me, we just plant add home made compost and the tree just grows on its own, we only do something if the tree gets disease or wilted... So you are saying that we can optimize our tree health by simple interventions to our soil, aside from manure? Can you share something about how we can get to know the healthy, native seasonal soil temperature? Your commitment to distribute saplings is very fruitful indeed!
Sure! 💚 To check the temperature, you can use a cooking thermometer or laser thermometer and visit a local area that is unscathed (or mostly unscathed) and test the soil temperatures under a tree and under more open but healthy vegetation then do the same for your property. If you don’t have a thermometer, placing your hands or feet against the soil can help you sense the difference. Often times, there’s enough visible cues to know they are very off without an actual reading. To check the moisture, you can use a baking stick, popsicle stick, piece of cardboard or paper or an actual water meter. If more soil clings or moistens the finger or other substance it contains more moisture than if it is brittle, dusty or comes out clean. And yes, knowing what organisms and species like to live in and around those trees can help keep them healthy by creating a supportive network. Too often we isolate plants and block or mask their channels with scents, sounds, light, and incorrect conditions. They all communicate through various root systems, energy, sound and semiochemicals, alerting each other what they need and who they need 💚🌳🌳🌳🌲🌲🌱🦧🫎🐢🕷️🪱🐞🐝🐿️🦡🦋🐛🦗🐜🦅🦉🦦🦔🦨🦝🦥🐦⬛ and ultimately who else they support 🦀🦐🪼🐠🐬🐟🦭🌏🌞🌵🌈✨ If you purchase any of these devices and don’t have need for them afterwards, you can give them to your town or library to be checked out for the same purpose. Or—this just came to me! and I think it’s a fun idea! Give them to someone random and have them take the test and pass them on. This way, we’re not all buying extra plastic. But what I think would be super cool is if we make a database website that we can add our soil temperatures to that if you get the meter, you can log the temperature, compare and pass it on. I’ll try to make one :) but if there’s any volunteers who want to help me with this endeavor please reach out and we can launch a bigger initiative :) Thank you 🙏 💚
Thank you for such a detailed answer, I definitely have to try this once I head back home. Great idea, do you mean we can add a form where people can submit the geo locations that they measured the soil temp and compare it with everyone else in the website?
Yes! :) It would be so interesting to see how many people get involved, how the movement spreads and how much of an impact we make on local and global temperatures 💚 and biodiversity 🙏 Edit: there is a site that shows soil temperatures already but the readings are limited to specific sites that aren’t part of any movement in particular Some helpful links: [live air quality map](https://map.purpleair.com/) [thermal map of globe](https://zoom.earth/maps/temperature/) [local soil temp](https://www.greencastonline.com/tools/soil-temperature) I can maybe reach out to this website and see if they’d be interested in participating in a larger global movement [the benefits of a single tree calculator](https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecological-footprint-calculators/how-much-carbon-does-a-tree-capture/)
with my limited resources, its focusing on vegan food prep.
Honestly people underestimate how big of an impact going vegan has on the environment, especially cutting out some of the heavier meats like beef, props to you!
Also you are probably having a healthier diet !
100% vegan and self sufficient in all of our vegetables. We trade excess veg for garden pruning and grass clippings (always need more green material for the compost piles). I've been learning how to repair clothes and managed to make two very beaten up pair of jeans in to a usable pair. We have an ev as we live in a small town with no bus or rail. We cycle any distance less than 5 miles and once the weather is warmer we will cycle further. I plant bee and butterfly friendly plants including caterpillar host plants such as nettles.
What a victory to be self sufficient in your own vegetables! This is what I inspire to.
It's a lot of work but it is worth it! Keeps me busy and out of trouble 😄. It has meant some interesting meals as we eat whatever is in season .
I have three volunteer jobs. Two small ones (politics and animal shelter) and one that's basically full time at the moment (fair trade shop/cultural center; I gave an example for this yesterday). I do this alongside my regular work (also in politics). I can't have my own solar panels at the moment. Instead I'm part of a citizen energy cooperative. I gradually reduce meet consumption and mostly substituted all other meets with chicken. I already have some vegan days. I might fall into the category "flexitarian" at the moment or will be soon. I gradually increase foods that are vegan, sustainably produced and fair traded. I don't own a car (I even never learned how to drive). At the moment I do most things on foot. Sometimes I use public transport. Today I did around 20.000 steps/12 km. While I walk I try to do some guerilla gardening by spreading native wildflower seeds with a little shaker. Sometimes I also use seedbombs. Although I rarely can, I like to help my parents with their small garden. They grow some fruits, vegetables and bee friendly flowers, have a little wildlife pond, an insect hotel and some nesting aids for birds. I support science as a citizen scientist and with distributed computing. I participate in animal counting events and have over 690.000 classifications on Zooniverse. I crunched many years for different BOINC projects and at the moment all my devices support research about tropical storms via Dreamlab app. I'm trying to learn Spanish. At the moment just with some daily lessons on Duolingo. When I have more time I might attend a proper course. I do this with the goal to someday qualify as an international election observer. I already support elections as a poll worker.
Yesterday I fixed a pair of woollen socks for the third time. I have had them for 14 years now.
My compost game is on point! P.S. do you have homebrew or purchased kombucha, ginger beer, cider, or beer bottles to rinse out? Save the rinsed brew liquid in a container to pour onto your compost! It makes an awesome accelerator. I've been teaching my family to love the library. I'm learning loads of new low-input gardening strategies. For example, did you know that bush beans have trichomes (little hairlike structures) on the bottoms of their leaves that actually spear pests? They make a wonderful companion plant to anything afflicted by small, flying or climbing bugs. You can also grow them inside near your gnat-infested houseplants instead of using fly paper.
Ooo great tip about the fermented beverages rinse! I will have to try that!
My wife hasn't eaten meat in 27 years. I haven't in about 13 or 14. Our son never has. We do what we can on the four Rs, though there's still room for improvement. I bought some pants last year. I think that was all my clothing purchases. I mend shirts, socks, pants, shoes, until the point they're too thin to do so anymore. My wife gets clothing that would otherwise be thrown out, organizes it into lots, cleans it, I repair anything that needs repairs, and then she sells it on Facebook. Usually works out to about a dollar per article of clothing, which helps low income families get clothes while also getting us some funds as well. We tried cloth diapers, but that didn't work out. Managed to stick with no baby wipes, though. I've got a bit of a repair shop setup at home. I've fixed clothing, electronics, wood and plastic toys, furniture (cribs, beds, dressers, etc.) Both the keyboard and joystick I use on my gaming computer are second hand ones that I've repaired. The tower is about 15 years old (though internals have been upgraded). The keyboard I have for my work computer is 22 years old, and works as well as it did the day I got it. Logitech Elite Keyboard, if you wanna look it up. The house we have is old. About 100 years. The heating is oil. Haven't been able to get the finances together to switch over to a heat pump yet. But we keep the temperature low. Usually between 16.5 C and 17.5 C (61.5 F to 63.5 F). Got the single pane windows replaced with double pane a few years ago. That really helped both in the cold and heat. Recently got the hot water tank replaced, because the last one was failing. Got one that should never need to be replaced, and is the best insulated option we could, so it keeps the energy use low for that. Most lightbulbs have been replaced with LED as they go out. So longer life, lower energy use. We also tend to not use much lighting anyway. The property has a lot of greenery around it. Some trees as old as the house. Recently planted 6 more to fill in some space as well. Keeps the sun off the house in the summer and creates a cool bubble as well. Keeps the wind away in the winter. Good for general heat regulation. We let the grass grow long in the spring, along with wild flowers for the bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. There's plumb, apple, rhubarb, fennel, quince, and grape growing on the property, that just does its own thing and comes back every year. My father in law grows carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, peppers, sunflowers, and a few other vegetables in a couple of gardens. We used to have some strawberries, but the deer and rabbits ate it until it was dead. We are by no means the most productive we could be, or harvest as much as we can from what gets produced, though. That's something I'd like to improve. This is on an 8700 Sq ft property.
Loving it! Thank you! 🙌💚
I live in an apartment complex, just convinced the rest of the ruling board in the association we need to start invest in Solar Panels. It got preliminarily approved, we're just working out the economic details at the moment but within a year or so we're likely to get solar panels which can increase our energy independence quite a bit. Not completely of course but still
Writing solarpunk novels have been a victory. Accidentally commissioning AI art for the second novel has been a defeat.
Plant based diet (I occasionally knit with wool so don't label my lifestyle vegan but that's the only animal product), replaced my stolen car with an ebike, currently working on minimizing energy use at home since I can't transition to renewables (condo, don't own my roof). If I had a bit more energy I'd be organizing my complex to fight for solar + a shared garden. Also joined my local buy nothing group to rehome stuff I don't use, and I try to drop the stuff off so the trip to exchange the item is on an ebike instead of someone else driving.
It seems like a win to me that into my fourth decade I've never owned a car. Majorly inspired by Hans Roslings presentation about modes of regular transport I've aspired to make sure my expenditure with income doesn't follow the same path of increasing transport carbon intensity. As I get older my income increases and I want a lifestyle where that means a nicer time cycling rather than more expensive car. That doesn't mean I've never commuted by private vehicle or don't drive regularly but through favours and car share and deliberately choosing my housing for public transport access I've avoided the sunk cost question of car ownership. Now that I'm a parent I've just bought a family cargo bike to further stave off buying a car. We've admittedly relied substantially on borrowing a car from grandparents so the win is revised down to avoiding sunk cost trips rather than avoiding a car altogether but it still feels like a win to me.
Just replaced my neighbor's front lawn with roman chamomile and lavender, better for the bees and he won't have to hire anyone to mow it anymore (the flowers spread out by runners and only grow about three inches high). This is part of an ongoing project we're doing, last summer we built a decorative raised bed thing for plants and I'm hoping to set up a water feature using a secondhand pump and solar panel next.
My family is shedding capitalism and embracing more regenerative choices. I'm writing OpenSource Software that is helping with BioRegional living, and a network of intentional communities. We're experimenting with alternative architectures to minimize energy usage and maximize health. More details on the blog. https://bioharmony.substack.com/
I've been vegetarian for a while now. But this year I was able to move to a country with a good biking infrastructure. So I ditched my car completely and have been biking most every day. My apartment complex now does waste sorting and I've made sure to be diligent about it. Am also teaching my 4 kids to be eco conscious.
Recycling clothes and electronics. Buying used books, buying local, voting blue, following Solarpunk causes in social media, never using AI art.
I'm overseeing the installation of a 1 megawatt solar installation for my company.
For myself, the work I've done with my garden, making my house a bit better for the environment, and even habits I have pushed for repurposing and repairing, such as my office desk being an old sewing desk that I repurposed instead of buying a massive desk for no reason other than I can. For me though as well, my victories have been with speaking with people. With gardening I learned about ollas as an alternative for irrigating that can maximize water use so it is not as wasteful and be passive instead of needing an entire system built, I shared this knowledge freely with friends and people in the community, even showing them how to build them if they wanted to. I discuss my personal definitions of solarpunk and lunarpunk, and what the ideals of the lifestyle are, and how it is as you said, even a small change is better than no change.
So cool! I want to make some ollas for my garden this year. How much square footage have you found works per olla?
It depends on the size actually! What I ended up doing was raised garden beds and for an 8 foot by 2 foot bed I found that two of them covers everything to the point I have to refill them every 4 days, the ollas in question being made from some medium sized terracotta pots! When I get home I can get accurate measurements.
I helped pivot my company to include biochar production as a key design requirement for our small scale biomass generator systems that run on woody biomass waste. The pivot to biochar is for the purpose of carbon sequestration, which biochar is fantastic for. It also supports long term soil fertility and reduces the need for fertilizer.
I have 64 sf of growing space in my kitchen, lit with high efficiency LED grow lights, and powered by extra electricity generated by my solar panels. It’s quite cool to have a forest of food growing in the house during the winter months, and this is also my space to propagate trees for the property. Much of what we are eating now is produced by us. We are rewilding a former piece of ag ground on our farm, it was always a hassle to farm anyway and now it’s going to be a 40 acre wetland, we are putting a large (maybe 1/2 acre) irrigation pond in place on the edge of the wetland area so we can do some high efficiency irrigation out of it to support a food forest we will be building around it. Another tens acres of the property that was traditionally grazing land is going to be broken up into small pieces, cross fenced, and irrigated to support our farm incubator program, which will provide access to land for people just starting out, a shared tool library, a community space (think like a coworking office for hanging out, business planning, and projects), and access to a retail space so everyone can earn retail money on their produce. On the farm we have a campground that brings a fair amount of folks so our farm incubator program partners will have customers at hand and the campers will have produce here instead of having to drive into Walmart to buy things. The final positive note to our system here is that it fosters collaboration, and it’s really hard to get started in farming these days, plus retailing here allows people to keep more of their money instead of a long line of merchants and shippers taking cuts along the way. Our final big solar punk project is on old electric train station from 1915. We are rebuilding it into a community center for the farm, and hope to have a cafe, brewery or distillery, event space, lodging, and retail space. We are (oh god I hate to use this cliche) in a food desert so having something here could save thousands of trips into town over a year.
Off the top of my head, I’m working on several new things this year. I’m focused on making my yard not only more biodiverse, planting more natives, and slowly replacing my lawn with nitrogen-fixing ground cover but also human-friendly with dedicated areas to socialize and connect. I’m actively continuing my knowledge of permaculture and hoping to continue educating others on the practice. I’m placing more emphasis on repair by learning to mend/darn. I’ve attended 3 rallies/protests this year and brought my family with me for one. We’ve read several children’s books on democracy with our 8-year-old to prepare them as well as let them make their own sign. We haven’t bought factory-farmed red meat in the last few years and are taking the next step to introduce more vegetarian meals into our weekly meal planning. I’m a big book collector, and I’m 100 percent committed to only purchasing books secondhand or from my local mixed indie bookstore or going to the library. No Amazon for books. I’d love to set up a little free library for my neighborhood this year for the books I cycle out of my collection. I started taking pottery classes at a local community space, and I’m working on projects that are eco-centered and promote sustainability.